


Warts And All

by Marbylous



Category: Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Old Married Couple, Post-Canon, brief mentions of losing teeth just as a heads up, some slight loving banter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marbylous/pseuds/Marbylous
Summary: If there was one thing they could both agree on, it was that they loved each other, warts and all.After taking the job for the Spaniard, the giant, and the mostly-dead man in black, Valerie and Max decide together how to best celebrate Humperdinck's recent humiliation. A party? Revenge? Why not both?
Relationships: Miracle Max/Valerie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Warts And All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyPoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/gifts).



> This is my first time doing any sort of fic exchange thing. The Princess Bride has been one of my all-time favorite movies for years and with this fic, I also tried to incorporate elements from the book as well. If you haven't read the book, you're not missing out on any crucial info; it's mostly me trying to imitate the writing style, carrying on running-jokes, and sprinkling in tiny details that didn't make it to the movie. Enjoy!

Valerie and Max had been married for a long time. So long, in fact that it seemed like they’d been together for a million years at least. If you were to ask them if they were happy together, the answer would change depending on many factors: the hour of the day, if the dishes were washed, whether they found a particularly potent magic mushroom at the market they had been running low on, and of course, which one of them you asked.

But if there was one thing they could both agree on, it was that they loved each other, warts and all. Which was fortunate, as they were both getting on in their years and had a lot of warts between the two of them. Being miracle workers, they could easily have gotten rid of their warts. (The cure for warts had been invented by that time; in fact, it was Valerie who helped invent it in her younger days, before she had warts). But it is well known that having lots of warts means you’re old, and being old means you have lots of wisdom, and so people with lots of warts were extremely wise, and it is for that reason that the couple decided to keep their warts in order to present themselves with dignity and professionalism fit for their position at the castle.

So when they were fired and replaced with a different, wart-less, miracle man, Max was rightly furious. Apparently, the rulers of the country were more concerned about appearances rather than hiring someone who actually knew how to do their job and had the warts to prove it. The day after they were fired, the new miracle man announced that the king’s health had recovered remarkably, which Max knew was a stinking lie, as he himself had tended to the doddering king the previous day, and no miracle man with that wart-less of a face could miracle the king into better shape in that short amount of time.

“Those blithering _idiots_!” Max had yelled that night at dinner, smacking his hand on the table and making his stew slosh out of his bowl.

“I know, dear,” Valerie grumbled, as she picked up her spoon that Max’s outburst knocked to the ground.

“There’s no way he could have healed King Lotharon that fast. It’s impossible. The king could barely mumble a coherent sentence last I checked,” Max raged on.

“I agree, dear,” muttered Valerie sourly. “Now clean up your mess before you do anything else.” Max muttered under his breath as he waved his hand over his spilled stew, guiding it back into the bowl.

“Now where was I?” he grumbled.

“The last time you checked on the king.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you, my love.”

“No problem, my darling.” They gazed at each other for a moment, smiling, before Max remembered that he was still mad and slammed his fist on the table, spilling his stew once more.

“Our dear king could barely stand on his own for crying out loud!”

“Max─”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” said Max as he waved his hand over the spilled stew once more. “But this new guy comes prancing into town, does some cheap party tricks, and suddenly we’re replaced with some kid who can’t tell a bitterling from a bladderwrack, and we’re expected to _believe_ him that the king is now in perfect health?”

“Just how young is he?” Valerie asked.

“What, the king?”

“No, this whippersnapper who stole our position.”

“Ah, that makes more sense,” said Max. “He’s seventy-one, can you believe it?”

“No!” she gasped, putting her hand over her mouth. “That’s barely an apprentice!”

“Exactly!”

“Does he even have any warts?”

“You’re not gonna believe me.”

“Don’t tell me─” Valerie started. Max nodded grimly.

“Not even a single one? Not even on the nose or chin?” she asked, starting to get a frantic look in her eye.

“Not a single one,” said Max with a relish, jabbing his finger for emphasis. It was Valerie who spilled the stew that time as she suddenly stood up and bumped into the table, paying no heed to the puddles dripping onto the floor. She veered round the mess to grab her traveling cloak and boots before heading to the front door.

“Wait!” cried Max. “Dear! Your stew!”

“Forget the stew!” She punctuated this by putting an arm through a sleeve of her cloak with a dramatic flourish. Max scrabbled for his own robe and hat before following his wife out the door of their house.

And that was the last time either of them saw their house ever again. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that was the last time either of them _lived_ in their house ever again. While they were marching up to the castle in the middle of the night to give the royal family a piece of their mind, Prince Humperdinck saw that as an excellent opportunity to snatch up some free real estate. Poor Max and Valerie came back to find their house taken over, complete with armed guards on the order of the prince. If there was one good thing in all of this, it was that the prince did not know much about the ins and outs of miracle-ing, and therefore did not know that any good miracle man and witch worth their salt keeps their secret magical ingredients tucked away in a secret magical hut separate from their house.

And so it was to Valerie and Max’s secret magical hut that they grudgingly returned to, the combined anger of them both simmering under the surface and the name Humperdinck now a taboo between the two of them. And it was in that hut that they lived for the next three years, until the arrival of a Spaniard and a giant stumbling from the direction of the Thieves Quarter, toting a mostly dead body of a man in black, disrupted the relative peace they had managed to find in the outskirts of the castle town they used to live in the center of.

Max would not admit it, but being replaced had taken a huge blow to his self-confidence. From that day forth, he refused to perform any more miracles. When asked why he would not miracle anymore, he would mutter something about how if Humperdinck didn’t want his miracles, then nobody else would get his miracles either. Max would never say that he was scared of the (frankly inconceivable) idea that the kingdom’s new miracle man could indeed be better than him. But Valerie knew. Even if she wasn’t a witch, she was still his wife of eighty years, and could tell these sorts of things, as anyone who has been in love that long can do.

So when the news about the disastrous royal wedding reached their hut faster than news usually did, both of them jumped for joy as high as their old joints would allow, the spark rekindled in their eyes, especially Max’s.

“Do you know what this means, Max?” Valerie asked as she twirled around.

“That that king’s stinking son finally got what’s coming to him!” Max cheered as he did a little jig.

“Yes, that too,” Valerie agreed, “but it also means that your miracle worked!”

“Of course it worked,” replied Max. “There was no doubt about it to begin with.”

“I never doubted it for a second,” Valerie affirmed. Now, despite them both expressing confidence in Max’s miracle-ing skills, they were both lying, just a little bit, as they said so. Max was lying because he _had_ doubted himself and feared his skills had gone rusty when he made the miracle pill, but because he kept his doubts to himself, it didn’t really count. Valerie was lying in a different way, because while she didn’t doubt that Max still had his unparalleled skill at the time he made the miracle pill, she _did_ have doubts that Max’s shattered confidence could affect it. But because she kept those doubts to herself, it also didn’t really count as lying.

The couple continued to dance and cheer, casting spells willy-nilly just because they could, lighting their hut with an array of colors and turning the inside into something like what one would see at a disco. (Contrary to popular belief, disco balls had already been invented at this point. However, it would take several hundred more years to become immortalized in pop culture because unlike the ball, disco itself had not been invented yet. Thus, disco balls were considered extremely niche. Valerie and Max had probably never heard of them.)

Their merrymaking lasted all throughout the night and into the next morning. In fact, every time they were about to wind things down, and the neighbors thought they would finally be able to get some sleep, the pair would suddenly remember another reason to be happy and continue with renewed vigor. It was quite possibly the most fun they had ever had in their long lives, with the possible exception of the time they skipped a week of Miracle School together to go white-water rafting in their younger days. (Since then, it has become an unofficial rite-of-passage for students of the Miracle School to venture through turbulent waters at least once in their careers, and it is for this reason that this ancient and time-honored sport still exists today.)

When at last their weary bones started creaking from the strain of their partying, Max and Valerie reluctantly sat back down at the table in their hut, gave each other a quick kiss, and stared at each other, absolutely exhilarated and the most in love they’ve been in with each other in all their years. They both sighed at the same time, but these were good sighs, sighs of contentment.

It was Valerie who asked the question first.

“So now what happens?” Silence hung in the air after that, and Max’s face twisted into thirty-four unique expressions as he contemplated a question that never crossed his mind once in their jubilance. Unable to draw up something useful from his blank mind to say and stalling for time, Max eventually settled on, “What do you think, dearie?”

“Well,” Valerie said, “suppose we don’t do anything different than every other day the last three years. Would you still like to live here in this hut?” Max thought for a moment, remembering those dark days after he got fired. Those were not happy memories. He instinctively started to grind his teeth together before remembering that he had ground all of them down to nothing already in anger three years ago. (This was before dentures).

“Don’t get me wrong, I love what you’ve done with the place, Val,” he replied, “but it would certainly be nice to get our old house back.” She nodded.

“I agree. It’s too cramped in here to live _and_ experiment with new miracles.”

“But Valerie, that’s not gonna happen. That would mean having to go up to the castle and demanding them to remove the guards and I want nothing to do with that horrid place ever again.” A light flickered in Valerie’s eyes.

“So what?” she replied. “Are you saying you’re a coward?”

“Now listen here, you know that’s not what I mean─” But Valerie was barrelling on, heedless of his complaints.

“They’ve already fired you! What are they going to do, fire you again?”

“I’m not going back because I’m scared, you know,” retorted Max. “As a matter of fact, I’m not going back to that castle for a completely different reason.” Valerie already knew this, of course, but she was trying to get Max to say the words himself. Max still had his pride, and it could sometimes get the better of him. She still loved him anyway.

“Oh? And what reason is that?” she asked, knowing perfectly well the answer.

“Because they don’t deserve me!” Max growled.

“And _why_ is that?” she pressed.

“Because I’m too good of a miracle man to let it go to waste on those fools who can’t see talent if it slapped them in the face!” Max roared.

“Exactly!”

“No, you don’t underst─” Max cut himself off as he registered what Valerie had said. “Yes! You. You get it!” Valerie smiled smugly at herself.

“So let’s see if I’ve got this right,” said Valerie, knowing full well that she absolutely got it right. “You don’t want to go back to the castle not because you’re scared, but because you’re too good for them.”

“You betcha I’m too good for them!” Max cried out, passion filling his voice. “Those pompous royals, especially that spoiled prince, don’t deserve to lick the dust from my boots!”

“Even your dirty sock is too good for them!”

“Don’t forget yourself, dear. You may not be a witch, but you are also most definitely too good for them.” Max looked at Valerie with almost as much love as Westley and Buttercup looked at each other. Not quite, as no couple in the history of the world up to that point could look at each other with as much love as Buttercup and Westley did, but Max and Valerie did come very close in the ranking at that moment.

“Oh, you were always a softie, Max dear.” Max looked aghast.

“I have never been soft in my life!”

“Sure you haven’t,” Valerie consoled. “But you know what would be better revenge than avoiding the castle for the rest of your life?” Max’s ears perked up.

“Revenge, you say?” he said, one overgrown eyebrow rising.

“What do you say if…,” Valerie began.

“Yes?”

“Instead of avoiding the castle altogether…,” she continued.

“Yes, dear?” Max asked, growing impatient.

“You strolled right up to the castle gates and- nope! I’m not done yet!” Max’s mouth clamped shut again, still straining to protest as his wife continued.

“You stroll right in, demand an audience with the king and queen and prince.”

“Now why on earth would I want an audience with that pile of manure of a prince?”

“Hush, Max. What I’m saying is that you go to the royal family and they see how wrong they were to get rid of you. They see that firing you was a huge mistake and they will _beg_ to have you back.” Silence now. Valerie had cast the bait, and now she waited for Max to bite. Max, meanwhile, rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Beg for me to come back, eh?” Valerie folded her hands and rested her chin on top of them.

“With tears in their eyes,” she replied.

“And when they’re on their knees, sobbing for me to come back, to be their Miracle Man once again…” Valerie didn’t say anything, but rather nodded her head for him to continue his train of thought.

“...I stroll up to them," said Max, voice rising in power, "kick that stinking prince while he’s on the ground, and say ‘Ha! You really should have thought of that before you fired the greatest Miracle Man this country has seen in 800 years!’ And then I leave them on the ground where they belong. They'll be weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth until they grind them down into nothing but fine powder. And then my lost teeth can have revenge too!"

“Oh, and we can also collect the powder, it will be very good in my potions,” said Valerie, eyes lighting up at the prospect.

“And can you imagine the look on that brat prince’s face when we refuse the offer?” Max said, starting to get up on wearied bones once more in delight. Valerie’s face scrunched in confusion.

“The offer to use their ground teeth in my potions?”

“No, my love, the offer to beg to have us back. They can't offer me anything that will give me more satisfaction than bringing that prince to his knees.”

“Oh yes, that does sound delightful, dear. Let us pack up this very night so we can go first thing in the morning.”

“Absolutely splendid idea, my wonderful witch.”

“I’m not a witch, remember? I’m your wife.”

“And a wonderful one at that,” said Max, his face beaming. “Well what are we waiting for?” And with that, the couple started to pack up their things to make their trip to the castle and then back to their old house. In went their clothes and their spellbooks, their trinkets and their knick-knacks. If they were going to get their house back after this, all the better to do it in one trip. They decided at the last minute to bring along their stores of miracle ingredients, in case they needed to perform a live demonstration at their appointment.

I would love to say that what happened next perfectly followed Max's fantasies, that the royal family cried and begged until their tears started to flood the room and the furniture started floating around. Unfortunately, nothing happened at all, not even a single tear. The prince was more of a coward than Max was (or rather what Max believed he himself was) and refused to show his face for their appointment. To add insult to injury, Queen Bella did not understand why she was supposed to beg to take Max back when they already had another perfectly good Miracle Man at the Prince’s insistence, and King Lotheron in general did not understand what was going on, being just as old and doddering as he was before Max was fired.

The icing on the cake, so to speak (this was after cakes), was when they came back to their old house mid-afternoon and found that the prince had used it as a storage room of sorts for all the gifts from his many admirers. Their once beloved home was now nothing but a Humperdinck shrine. Upon this discovery, Max let out a string of curses, both the magical and non-magic kind, and the resulting fire ended up burning the whole thing to a crisp. All and all, it was perhaps the second worst day in Valerie and Max’s life (the worst day in their lives being the day they were fired in the first place). If Max had any teeth left, then he would have been grinding them so hard to lose them all over again.

After both had calmed down enough to think things over in a considerably less angry state, and as they sat on their luggage pondering what to do, Valerie happened to look up and see a flurry of activity on the harbor surrounding a large pirate ship with black sails. She squinted at the sight. She knew her hearing was starting to go bad, and now she was wondering if her vision was starting to go as well.

“Max, sweetie,” she said tapping him on the shoulder.

“Yes, dearest,” he replied still rather grumpily.

“Isn’t that the nice young man who came to us the other day asking for a miracle?”

“Huh? Which one?”

“The skinny one with the pretty sword over there.” Max turned to the direction she was pointing and could just barely make out a figure amongst the others, dressed in dark clothes and carrying a glittering sword at his hip.

“Isn’t that the guy who was mostly dead? Hah! I knew he was a shady character after all!” Max exclaimed. “He must have stolen that Spaniard’s sword. I betcha he was also the reason that prince never showed his ugly mug earlier today.” Valerie smacked him on the shoulder.

“No, Max, it’s the other way round. The Spaniard is wearing the man in black’s clothes,” Valerie retorted. Max knew his eyes had been going bad for a while, and now he was wondering if his hearing was starting to go as well. If that happened, then he and Valerie couldn't balance each other out. He dug into one of his ears, trying to clear it.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the one with bad hearing, Max, I know you heard exactly what I just said.”

“But, why would he be wearing the clothes of the man in black?” Max was befuddled. Then a terrible thought suddenly came to him.

“Val, what if the miracle pill didn’t work after all, and the Spaniard looted the body?” Panic was now rising in his chest and he gripped her hands tightly in his own. His newly restored confidence was quickly dissolving.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There has to be a good reason for it.” Though she said that, Valerie was starting to have doubts of her own. In an effort to keep the both of them calm, she asked, “Why don’t we go over and ask what’s going on?” Max nodded at that, and the two set off toward the bustling harbor.

Indeed, it was the Spaniard wearing the clothes of the mostly-dead man, the six-fingered sword at his side. Max and Valerie thought he looked a bit pale and sickly up close, however, a far cry from his ruddy face a few nights ago when he was spinning tales of a fictional wife and starving children.

“Well, well, well, sonny, what are you doing here dressed like that?” The Spaniard jumped at Max’s voice and whipped around, sword in hand, before recognition flashed across his face.

“Miracle Max!” he cried and squeezed the breath out of the old man in a giant hug. “I cannot thank you enough!”

It took Max a few moments to catch a good enough breath to cry back, “Put me down, sonny, I’m not as young as I used to be.” He was sure he could hear his bones creaking. The Spaniard promptly dropped him and apologized.

“I am so sorry. It is just that I am so excited to see you again,” he began. “It is because of your miracle pill that I was finally able to enact my revenge and put my father’s soul to rest after over twenty years.”

“Wait, wait, wait, hold up there.” Max paused to dig at his ear again. “You say my miracle pill worked?”

“Yes, it worked beautifully, and now the count is dead thanks to you and the man in black you miracled.” The Spaniard was grinning from ear to ear, face beaming despite it’s sickly pallor.

“Did you hear that, Max? I told you your pill worked,” said Valerie. “You just had to believe in yourself.”

“Of course it worked, why wouldn’t it?” he brushed off. “I’m the greatest miracle man there is.”

In the middle of their usual loving banter, however, the Spaniard staggered to the side, holding up some of his weight with his sword.

“Good gracious, you look like you could do with a miracle yourself!” cried Valerie. The Spaniard tried to shrug it off.

“No, no, I’m fine,” he said, staggering some more. “I’ve had worse.” And he promptly keeled forward. Valerie and Max just barely caught him right before he hit the ground. Others nearby swarmed around to help prop him up, and together with Valerie and Max, the Spaniard was tilted upright once more, an arm slung around either of them.

They eventually managed to haul him to the deck of the ship, where a quick scan of his body revealed multiple unhealed stab wounds. They were, quite frankly, astounded that this man was still alive, and not even a little dead.

“Everyone, stand back!” Valerie shouted, surprisingly loud for such a tiny woman. “We are a witch and a Miracle Man and together we can miracle him back to health.” Max spun around toward his wife.

“We’re going to do _what_?”

“It’s been so long since we’ve been in the miracle business proper, and that last miracle we did reminded me of how much fun it was," said Valerie with glistening, pleading eyes. Max couldn't resist those eyes. He glanced everywhere but her face searching for an excuse.

“But- but- we can’t just miracle folks for _free_ , Val. How are we going to make a living doing that?”

One of the sailors behind them spoke up hesitantly.

“Um, excuse me.”

“Yes, sonny?”

“Well, we’re actually pirates, so if you can heal him, then we’ll be able to pay you a share of the treasure.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s this guy to ya, that you would promise us treasure?”

“That is the captain, sir. The Dread Pirate Roberts.” Max and Valerie’s eyes widened as they looked at each other.

“Do you still want to take the job, dear?” Max whispered to her.

“Just think about it, Max. If we do this, we could have the great Dread Pirate Roberts in our debt,” Valerie whispered back.

"The Dread Pirate Roberts in our debt, eh?"

"Just think how exciting this will be!" whispered Valerie. "It'll be like white-water rafting again, like all those years ago!" A faraway look came to Max's face.

"That was fun, wasn't it," he agreed.

"We don't have anywhere else to go but back to the hut anyway, and that's not what you want, is it?" she pleaded.

"And we have all of our stuff here with us anyway...," Max muttered to himself.

Max furrowed his brow, considering. Then, coming to a decision, he straightened up and shouted at the crew.

“You there, sonny boy,” he snapped at a nearby pirate, who looked oddly familiar. “Go fetch our things from the dock and bring them here. We’ll need the magic ingredients in them if you want your captain to live.”

“As you wish,” the crewman smiled, and sprinted to bring the couple’s luggage on board. As he got back and dropped the bags on the deck, he asked, “Does this mean you’ll do it?” Max grinned crookedly, dug his hat out, and adjusted it on his head.

“We’re on the job.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a Yuletide gift for LovelyPoet, who was such a good requester for me to have for my first gift exchange, giving me many different prompts, plot bunnies, and directions I could take the request. I hope that this fic is "as you wished." :)


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